or bedding lying around. No toothbrush of his positioned next to Nicholas’s on the cracked bathroom sink. Not so much as a hint that the little boy who’d starred in no fewer than three-dozen national television commercials when he’d been alive had ever been there at all. Because the same day Timmy had died had been the same day that Annabeth Preston had sanitized their bedroom completely, along with the rest of their house, save for a single lonely picture that she’d slipped into a gilded silver frame and which now sat on a living-room end table with a long-ago-wilted solitary black rose stationed in front of it on a piece of her very best china. Where the videotapes of Timmy had gone was a complete mystery to Nicholas. Would probably always be a complete mystery to him. Who knew? Maybe she’d destroyed them. Just like she’d destroyed Timmy. Nicholas wouldn’t put it past her. Just like she’d undoubtedly destroy him too someday.
Like, maybe even today.
Walking over to the corner of his bedroom on shaking legs, Nicholas slid open the top drawer of his scarred oaken bureau and reached in before selecting a fresh pair of Hanes, at the same time drifting back mentally to the day of the ‘accident’. That’s what they called it, if the subject was ever spoken of at all, which, truth be told, didn’t happen very often these days.
The accident.
A funny way to describe bashing the front of your youngest child’s skull into the sharp edge of a porcelain bathroom sink and cracking it open like a ripe watermelon in a sickening explosion of red.
Nicholas shook his head to banish the unsettling memory to the special place inside his brain that he reserved for such things, knowing that it simply wouldn’t do to think about that horrible day right now, not with his mother standing so close. She’d sense it, like a rabid dog that had glimpsed a flash of bright red blood at a child’s pale white throat before succumbing to the overwhelming, inbred instinct to attack. Still, had he been older at the time, Nicholas might have laughed at the absurdity of it all. Decades before the empty political slogan had first been posited, he was the child who’d been left behind, both literally and figuratively. And he’d been left behind with a living, breathing monster. A monster with an almost-too-perfect body, a breathtaking face that could stop traffic clean in the middle of a New York City rush-hour and crystal-clear green eyes that could see right through his soul and recognise that he was a monster too.
Nicholas had one leg out of his soiled underwear when his mother corrected him for the first time that day.
‘No, keep those ones on,’ she said, clucking her small pink tongue against her perfect white teeth in exasperation. ‘It’ll remind you of the filthy little boy you’ve been here today and of the terrible sin that you’ve committed in the eyes of God. I’ll be waiting for you out in the car. Don’t make me wait long.’
With that, his mother pivoted on her well-turned ankles smartly enough to put a Waffen SS soldier to shame and marched out of his room. The gunshot sounds of her footsteps fading away down the long hallway were followed a moment later by the slamming of the front door in the distance, giving Nicholas’s heart a terrible start. Ten seconds later, he heard the car engine roar to life noisily out in the driveway.
When he felt absolutely certain she’d exited the house, Nicholas lifted his left wrist and checked his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. Never could be too safe about these sorts of the things, after all. Ever since the very beginning, ever since as far back as he could remember, his mother had always been the type of person who liked to watch others. To track their movements. To catch them off-guard whenever possible.
The type of person who liked to fuck with others.
Nicholas stared down at his watch and felt his chest constrict with an overpowering mixture of rage and shame. He hated the mere sight of the thing, of course, but he knew that he could never take it off. Not while his mother was still alive, at least. That would just be asking for it. Because the watch had been a gift from Annabeth on his eighth birthday and she insisted that he wear it at all times. A little something to prove to the people from the